


Boats Against the Current

by mellonbread



Series: The Unfixable Thought Machine [1]
Category: Disco Elysium
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Morning After, Sorry Cop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21634645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellonbread/pseuds/mellonbread
Summary: An Officer of the Revachol Citizens' Militia and a Representative of the Wild Pines Group enjoy a brief respite on the Martinaise waterfront.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Joyce L. Messier
Series: The Unfixable Thought Machine [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945072
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	Boats Against the Current

**Author's Note:**

> This is a demo fic for my unofficial Disco Elysium Ao3 work skin, the latest version of which (as of December 1, 2019) can be found [here.](https://pastebin.com/J1KV1Jff) Ao3 isn't accepting new public skins anymore, so if you want to use this yourself, just create a new skin on your personal dash and copy the CSS there.
> 
> It's completely ripped off the Homestuck public work skin, so [read the tutorial for that one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159609/chapters/2355671) if you're not sure how to use it.
> 
> As a personal tip, make sure you regularly copy your work in a separate text editor while you're formatting it. Ao3 can be fussy and it's nice to have a backup if you make a mistake that scrambles the working copy.

A voice rumbles to life in the unformed void of your dreaming mind  
  
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN \- YOU’VE DONE IT, HARRY BABY!  
  
  
YOU \- What?  
  
  
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN \- YOU SHOT YOUR WAD IN A WOMAN OLD ENOUGH TO BE YOUR MOTHER.  
  
ARE YOU PROUD OF YOURSELF? WAS IT GOOD FOR YOU?  
  
  
YOU \- I- Maybe?  
  
  
In the other ear, wheedling, sparking doubt  
  
LIMBIC SYSTEM \- Squirming, pumping salty fluids through fleshy tubes, leaking hormones everywhere. Each imagining someone else. The name on her lips wasn’t yours. The one you whispered in her ear when you squirted inside her, do you remember what it was?  
  
  
YOU \- It was-  
  
It was…

You’re awake. You don’t remember where you are. The world is spinning under you.  
  
  
YOU \- Oh fuck, oh please no, not this shit again  
  
Wait, again?  
  
  
LOGIC \- You haven’t lost your memory again, otherwise you wouldn’t remember losing it last time.  
  
  
PERCEPTION \- Sound of wood, water. Smell of-  
  
  
JOYCE \- “You’re back, good”  
  
Joyce L. Messier perfunctorily acknowledges your presence.  
  
You’re in her bed, in the cabin of her sloop, docked in Martinaise.  
  
  
PERCEPTION \- The spot next to you is indented, still warm.  
  
She’s wearing a warm, heavy coat and nothing else. The faulds in the back hang just below her ass.  
  
Beneath that coat is a body like an antique hatrack: curved, ancient and hard.  
  
  
LOGIC [Trivial: Success] \- You're in her bed, and you're naked. And she's naked. Which can only mean...  
  
  
SAVOIR FAIRE \- You got inside *that?*  
  
  
ELECTROCHEMISTRY \- Fuck yeah  
  
  
YOU \- “Fuck yeah”  
  
Did you say that out loud?  
  
  
JOYCE \- “Hmm?”  
  
She turns. The bottom button of the coat holds it closed just below the Y where her legs meet.  
  
“We really must do something about these exclamations of yours. It doesn’t inspire confidence when an officer of the law gives voice to every intrusive thought that wanders through his skull.”  
  
  
COMPOSURE \- Is she limping? Walking the tiniest bit bowlegged?  
  
  
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT \- You know she is. You must have really given it to her. It's the only explanation.  
  
  
LOGIC \- No, those are her “sea legs” you degenerate drunk. The boat’s pitching and she doesn’t want to fall over.  
  
  
PAIN THRESHOLD \- Like you did when you-  
  
  
YOU \- Your hand is skinned and splintered. You remember catching yourself falling, reaching out for her with the other hand.  
  
  
JOYCE \- She puts a hand on the bed and swings both legs up. Lying across the sheets, bare legged, she looks like a painting of someone’s mistress.  
  
  
ELECTROCHEMISTRY \- That’s how you ended up here, in the first place. She looked so elegant last night. The wind changed so you could smell her Number 12 perfume over the docks around you. She was saying something about ultraliberalism and the words “Wanna… fuck?” tumbled out of your mouth.  
  
  
SUGGESTION \- She fired back, writing it off as a joke. A misfiring in your ethanol soaked synapses. You let her know you were serious. She parried again. You feinted. The age old dance of man and wö man.  
  
  
COMPOSURE \- It didn't hurt that you'd finally bathed after three days and change of nonstop drinking.  
  
  
INLAND EMPIRE \- And that you reminded her of someone else. Yanked her back to a burning memory of another broad shouldered, hairy prole from the mean shores of Revachol.  
  
  
ELECTROCHEMISTRY \- Great, awesome. Seriously, thanks for getting us this far, guys. On the other hand, consider: you keep talking and talking, and her tits are right there, barely buttoned up, within arm's reach.  
  
  
CONCEPTUALIZATION \- Pale, blue veined and firm - like polished insulindian marble  
  
  
ELECTROCHEMISTRY \- See? This guy gets it! So quit ruminating and get her out of that coat!  
  
  
SUGGESTION \- You clearly haven't learned anything. You can't just go pawing at a lady like her. Say something thoughtful first.  
  
  
YOU \- You prop yourself on an elbow. The blanket slides down the hairy expanse of your stomach.  
  
“Did you sleep?”  
  
  
JOYCE \- She crosses her legs, showing a bit more thigh.  
  
“For an hour, maybe”  
  
She's pensive. Wistful even.  
  
  
EMPATHY \- She's not used to sleeping. Not used to dreams.  
  
  
INLAND EMPIRE \- Not the sleeping kind, anyway.  
  
  
JOYCE \- “...I was a king, dressed in a saffron robe. We journeyed for hours, or days. At the end, I had a man beheaded. I woke up when his head came off”  
  
  
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Challenging: Failed] \- Saffron robe - Seol, maybe? Or is that just one of the old tales about Shao?  
  
  
INLAND EMPIRE \- Every hundred paces a tower cleaves the air; to the eye their color is identical, yet the first of all is yellow, and the last, scarlet, so delicate are the gradations and so long the series.  
  
  
JOYCE \- She folds her legs up to the chest and slides them under the covers.  
  
You can still smell her perfume, mixed with the sweaty drunk who spent the night flopping around on top of her.  
  
(You definitely should have taken those beer cans out of the tub when you got in)  
  
  
SUGGESTION [Easy: Success] \- She's hoping you'll put your hands on her again. An arm around the shoulder, maybe a hand on the hip. And then...  
  
  
EMPATHY \- This is a woman who loves luxury but refuses to let herself take it easy. What you're seeing is either genuine vulnerability, or a superb act.  
  
  
DRAMA \- By my troth, 'tis the genuine article, sieur.  
  
  
YOU \- You've got an hour before you have to meet Kim in front of the Whirling. You could doze next to a warm body and the sound of soft breathing, just audible beneath the creak of timber and the surge of the surf. Or you could slip a large, scarred hand under her coat, see if she's up for another round.  
  
Fuck, you missed this. You've missed it for you-don't-know-how-long. It's uncorking a bottle of memories and for once, they're all good. Impressions of a hundred moments just like this one.  
  
You lie there, savoring a moment where nothing hurts.  
  
  
INLAND EMPIRE \- Hey  
  
  
YOU \- What?  
  
  
ELECTROCHEMISTRY \- Fuck's sake. Not now, man.  
  
  
INLAND EMPIRE \- Look at her hand.  
  
  
YOU \- No.  
  
I'm not a detective right now. I'm a fat, happy drunk who's been presented with two options, neither of them horrible, for literally the first time in living memory.  
  
  
AUTHORITY \- Excuse me?  
  
Not a detective?  
  
  
YOU \- No, come on, I didn't mean it like that.  
  
  
AUTHORITY \- NOT A DETECTIVE?  
  
LIEUTENANT DOUBLE YEFREITOR HARRIER DU BOIS YOU ARE AN OFFICER OF THE REVACHOL CITIZEN'S MILITIA-  
  
  
YOU \- You can't prove that!  
  
  
AUTHORITY \- AND YOU HAVE A CASE TO SOLVE.  
  
A CASE IN WHICH THIS WOMAN IS A SUSPECT.  
  
YOU HAVE BEEN PRESENTED WITH AN OPPORTUNITY TO COLLECT EVIDENCE AND YOU WILL STOP THINKING WITH YOUR PENIS AND LOOK AT HER HAND.  
  
YOU ARE THE *LAW.*  
  
  
YOU \- You look at her hand.  
  
  
PERCEPTION \- This is the first time you've seen her hands ungloved. She mentioned a husband, daughters, but she's not wearing a ring.  
  
  
LOGIC \- Could she have taken it off for work? You don't want a metal band on your finger if you run your hands up and down rope all day.  
  
  
VISUAL CALCULUS [Moderate: Success] \- No, there's not even an indentation where a ring would be.  
  
  
CONCEPTUALIZATION \- So she's divorced? A widow?  
  
  
INLAND EMPIRE [Impossible: Success] \- No. It's something else. You know she's overradiated, she told you so.  
  
  
EMPATHY \- Don't say what you're about to say. Not out loud.  
  
  
YOU \- "You don't have a husband. Or daughters. It's someone else's memory, leaking in."  
  
  
COMPOSURE \- Bingo.  
  
Someone inside her head is sifting through the filing cabinets for a reply. Going room by room, dragging all the trash where she has to see it, searching for something that isn't there.  
  
  
CONCEPTUALIZATION \- You remember the name she whispered when you fell on top of her, pinning her to the bed. You've got a good idea who it was.  
  
  
EMPATHY \- Don't use his name. If you say it you'll shatter her into a million pieces.  
  
  
VOLITION \- And she might tell you the name *you* called *her* and you  
  
Are  
  
Not  
  
Ready for that  
  
  
ELECTROCHEMISTRY \- And she *definitely* won't be up for round two.  
  
  
YOU \- "The fisherman, in the village, when you were young. Was he real?"  
  
  
EMPATHY \- Cuts like a knife.  
  
For a moment, behind her serene, strong face, there's a flash of real pain.  
  
She goes still, like you just sucked all the oxygen out of the room.  
  
Neither of you say anything. She isn't going to fill the yawning vacuum you just opened up. And opening your mouth hasn't gone so well either.  
  
  
YOU \- "Sorry. My mind's still full of holes, and you taught me everything I know about the Pale. I had to-"  
  
  
JOYCE \- "Oh relax, Lieutenant Double Why. I've needled you often enough about your memory problems."  
  
She smiles. Stretches, an exaggerated motion.  
  
"I can hardly object if you get a little of your own back stirring up *my* scrambled eggs."  
  
She taps her skull with a long, unringed finger for emphasis.  
  
  
EMPATHY \- The walls are back up. You aren't talking to an elegant, beautiful, deeply sick, deeply sad woman, who trusted you for just a moment. You're talking to the Wild Pines Rep again.  
  
  
YOU \- You exchange a couple more barbs with Joyce, none of which are worth commenting on. Good natured but ultimately hollow. You’ve managed to compress fucking-everything-up-for-everyone-around-you from a three day drunken bender into a single night. Who knows what you could achieve if you really put your mind to driving away everyone around you?  
  
  
ENDURANCE \- I'll tell you what you're going to achieve. You're going to stop moping, climb up on that deck and take a piss.  
  
  
YOU \- I am?  
  
  
ENDURANCE \- Yes. You know what happens to guys who don't clear the pipes out after cranking one out.  
  
  
YOU \- No, I genuinely don't  
  
  
ENDURANCE \- You don't want to know. Trust me, I've been squirting around in this shambling husk of a body since you were in diapers.  
  
  
VOLITION \- Just let him have this one, or it'll be all he talks about for the next hour.

YOU \- You stand on the deck of the sloop, wrapped in one of Joyce's bathrobes. The sun's coming up, turning the world as pink and purple as the bruised face of an inebriated ham sandwich.  
  
A Coalition aerostatic beats its gongs high above the whirling bay, welcoming the morning.  
  
  
INLAND EMPIRE \- Beneath the peaceful sea, a dying sunfish becomes a buffet as it sinks into the aphotic zone. Isopods the size of basketboules scuttle over its corpse, chittering delight, fighting over the choicest bits - the gills, the eyes.  
  
  
SHIVERS \- Somewhere in the Eminent Domain, a slum dweller raises a hand to his wife for the umpteenth and final time. She squeezes the trigger, sending a minie ball tumbling up through the jawbone and into his brain stem.  
  
  
ESPIRIT DE CORPS \- Lt Kitsuragi rolls over in his bed at the Whirling in Rags. In thirteen minutes his alarm will sound, signalling another grueling day jogging after you.  
  
  
PERCEPTION \- There's a rime of frost on the deck. The swell has settled down but the ship is still pitching. Watch your step.  
  
  
SAVOIR FAIRE \- Fuck that. Stand on the gunwale and piss over the side. It'll look cool.  
  
  
DRAMA \- And prithee, spread thy legs at twice shoulder width. Chest out! Power stance!  
  
  
YOU \- You step up onto the railing. The chill air hits your dick like the icy hand of a frost welkin, intent on sucking the life out of you.  
  
You plant your feet wide, one hand on your cock, one hand seated imperiously on your thigh. God damn, you look cool.  
  
The ocean swells beneath the sloop, the deck begins to tilt as last night’s Mesqual Margarita prepares to become today’s morning effluent.  
  
Quick, grab something!  
  
  
REACTION SPEED [Medium: Failed] \- Your free hand whips out to grab one of the ropes dangling above you. You succeed in skinning your hand as the boat violently lurches, tipping you forward.  
  
  
YOU \- “FUCK!”  
  
You fall in.


End file.
